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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23831815">The Road Ahead</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/WasJustAReader/pseuds/WasJustAReader'>WasJustAReader</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Tortall - Tamora Pierce</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>'cause duh, Book: Lioness Rampant, Coronation attack aftermath, Everyone is sooo tired, F/M, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Jon is half dead and still has it bad for Thayet, Looking Forward, and having feelings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 17:29:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,253</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23831815</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/WasJustAReader/pseuds/WasJustAReader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at some moments immediately after Jon returns Alanna's Gift post-Coronation Day attack, and she quite literally falls in to George's arms. Fits between the final chapter and epilogue of Lioness Rampant.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alanna of Pirate's Swoop and Olau &amp; Eleni Cooper, Alanna of Pirate's Swoop and Olau &amp; Jonathan of Conté, Alanna of Pirate's Swoop and Olau/George Cooper, Eleni Cooper &amp; George Cooper (Tortall)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Road Ahead</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Thayet watched as Alanna stumbled back in to George on the dais. The thief tightened his arms around her as Jonathan – the king – returned the muddy tendrils of Alanna’s Gift to her. When the transfer was complete, it was as if Alanna was a puppet with her strings cut. She turned her face in to George’s chest and this time her knees gave out completely. He caught her up quickly and turned to carry her toward where his mother sat. Thayet shuddered when she noticed Alanna’s hand clutching at George’s tunic, leaving a bloody streak in its wake.</p><p>Meeting Thayet’s eyes over Alanna’s flaming shock of hair, George nodded once and the corner of his mouth turned up in what might have been a smile but for exhaustion. Thayet’s head ached and she could feel the fizz of adrenaline leaving every last corner of her body as she raised a hand to her heart and managed a smile in return. The gesture felt like some sort of salute. A gesture of fealty, perhaps; to this land and the people she had found here. Found and loved.</p><p>Letting out a long breath, she looked around the hall. George kissed Alanna’s hair as he sat with her in his lap, Eleni fussing over the both of them. Buri knelt, half-bowed, at a back corner of the altar where Liam’s body lay, quietly offering a K’miri prayer for the dead. On the altar’s other side Thayet watched as Gary helped Jon to a seated position against the stone, talking all the while. The king nodded occasionally and she could see his lips move in short responses, but his eyes were closed and his head hung heavily. Thayet’s heart constricted as the sunlight pouring in through the gaping hole in the ceiling glinted off the snow-white strands now peppering his inky black hair. If Alanna was a collapsed puppet, Jonathan was a water skin poured dry. Skin pale, posture sagging, he was a shell of the man Thayet had met all those weeks ago in Myles’s study.</p><p>“There’s a long road ahead of us, Your Majesty,” she said quietly before squaring her shoulders and getting to her feet. She was ready to be useful again.</p><hr/><p>“Ma,” George said, approaching the remnant of stone riser where Eleni sat.</p><p>“Oh, dear… Get her down, then. Let’s have a look.”</p><p>“Her hands,” George began, voice rough. He sat, shifting Alanna so she sat across his lap while he tried to gently detach his tunic from her grip. “Come on, lass. Let’s have a look, hm?” George breathed a sigh of relief and bent to kiss her temple when Alanna slowly uncurled her fingers and held her hands out to Eleni.</p><p>The older woman wiped the blood away with what looked to be a torn strip of her own petticoat and examined Alanna’s hands carefully. Most of the bleeding had stopped, but the split scars were angry red and ragged. “Split end to end, the both of them,” Eleni tutted. “Fortunately, it looks worse than it is, or will be in the long term at least. We can clean and bind, but she’ll do better with her Gift –" She paused, watching as George’s face twisted in to a grimace.</p><p>“She’s damn near drained, ma. Near as bad as the king.”</p><p>“<em>Once she’s rested</em>, or with a palace healer before then,” Eleni finished pointedly, raising an eyebrow at her son. Turning her attention back to Alanna – who had yet to say a word since George carried her from the dais – Eleni asked “What else, love?”</p><p>Alanna shook her head and Eleni scoffed. “Uh huh, and pigs might fly!”</p><p>That startled the ghost of a smile from Alanna. There were tear streaks on her cheeks, but George noted her face was dry and her eyes clear, if bloodshot. <em>Cried out or shutting down?</em>  he wondered.</p><p>“Truly nothing else to be tended here,” she answered softly. “Bruises, wrenched muscles, scrapes.” <em>Grief, exhaustion… </em>George added silently. Alanna licked her lips. “I fell, but I don’t think I hit my head.”</p><p>Eleni searched Alanna’s face for a moment, eyes narrowed, as if deciding whether or not to believe her. “Alright,” she said slowly. “I’m going to check your head just to be sure, though.”</p><p>Alanna acquiesced to the gentle poking and prodding, answering questions when asked, but she was fading. George felt her body getting heavier, looser in his arms, and by the time Eleni had finished her examination, Alanna was well and truly asleep against his chest.</p><p>“She’ll be out for a couple of days, if I’m not mistaken,” Eleni murmured.</p><p>George nodded. Looking around at the devastated hall, he sighed. “A long journey to recovery all ‘round, I think.”</p><hr/><p>Gary had left him for the moment, gone to fetch… something. Honestly, Jon wasn’t really sure what, but no doubt it was important. Jon raised a cup – someone had brought it to him, he didn’t remember who or when – to his lips with shaking hands, dripping water embarrassingly down his front as he did so. Or, it would be embarrassing if he weren’t so <em>tired.</em> Cup drained, he closed his eyes and dropped his head back against the altar before steeling himself and opening them once more to truly survey the room.</p><p>The hall itself was a disaster. The floor was cracked, risers split and crumbling, the City Doors hung wide open off their hinges. Jon could feel sunlight on his face, which was… wrong. Craning his neck to look up, he groaned. “Mithros, that’s the <em>sky</em>.”</p><p>Back to the ground. He couldn’t focus on the bodies laid out on the main aisle. That was too much. But his eyes swept the room for the living. A number of the King’s Own and Palace Guard – aided by… was that Buri and Rispah? – were dealing with the group of conspirators and mercenaries who’d been taken alive. Healers and anyone else in decent shape were roving the wreckage tending to those in need, with the more seriously wounded among them being carried off to the infirmary. Off to his right he found George sitting on the remnant of a riser, Alanna cradled, eyes closed, in his lap. For a moment Jon’s heart froze, but no, her chest was rising and falling and George’s exhausted face looked... not peaceful, but not anguished either. Good.</p><p>Scanning the room once more, his eyes were caught by a flash of bright silk and dark hair. Thayet. She was alive. Thank the gods. Alive, and tying her hair in to a thick braid with a strip she had just ripped from her petticoat, a look of fierce determination on her face. Jon smiled – at least he hoped he did. He wasn’t quite sure what his face was doing; it may have looked more like a grimace, but oh well. Perhaps she felt his gaze, or perhaps it was just chance, but she looked up, and, meeting his eyes, proceeded to drop in to one of the deepest curtseys Jon had ever seen. Rising with a smirk, she saluted him and turned crisply on her heel, calling across the room “Gary! The king looks like he’s about to pass out, don’t you think we should do something about that?”</p><p>With what felt like every muscle in his body protesting, Jon choked out a laugh as his Prime Minister, just re-entering the hall, stopped in his tracks, flustered. <em>Yes, it will be very, very good to have Thayet around in the days to come</em>.</p>
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